All things related to Indian classical music and sitars. Raga Yaman will be the main focus, with an aim to document as much as possible to provide an understandable resource for beginner sitarists and lovers of Indian classical music.

Sore Fingers

Not mine, Ravi Shankar's
impressive grooves

Just a short post today. I've been practising a lot over the last couple of days and now my fingertips are feeling a tender. I had been neglecting my practice routine a little bit previously but the grooves in my fingertips are coming back nicely.

I'm still playing in Bhimpalasi, I just love the sound of it. It's funny how different your playing can be by switching ragas. For some reason this one feels a bit more natural to me than Yaman and I'm finding it a lot easier to explore. That komal Ga is just lovely.

I've been working on meends a lot and I'm making some progress with them. They're becoming more accurate and I'm starting to play with making them more expressive rather than just sliding from one note to another. This is going to take a lot more practice but the meends are already sounding better with a little vibrato here and there. I'm practising little runs up the neck and ending with a meend up to a higher note, and although it's proving difficult (more difficult than just doing a normal meend), I am getting there. It's very satisfying to see progress!

I'm also finding the meends easier in Bhimpalasi for some reason, I know they they shouldn't really. I still have the muscle memory of going Dha, Pa, tivra Ma from Yaman and it's a tough habit to break, I need to practice going down to the natural Ma, I'm sure I'll get it eventually.

I'm also love modulating the komal Dha, it just sounds so good, either in a meend or just a plain fretted note.

As I previously wrote, discovering Nikhil Banerjee's version of Bhimpalasi was the sole reason for me wanting to learn this raga but now I have discovered a recording of Sindhi Bhairavi that has simply blown me away. I was never a huge fan of NK until very recently but these two recordings are making him one of my favourite players.